Hate The Grind

A new ad network was launched today by the guys that run Text Link Ads, and ReviewMe along with ShoeMoney.

AuctionAds is a great example of how working together can bring great results. The basic premise behind their system is to aggregate the traffic of many publishers to serve ebay affiliate ads. eBay commission payouts is based on traffic and by aggregating the traffic of many publishers, AuctionAds is able to reach the top tier of the eBay affiliate payout schedule. Instead of receieving 40 - 45% of the monthly revenue, or $12US for each new eBay account the collective whole can earn 65% of the monthly revenue and $22US for each new eBay account.

One of the best things about AuctionAds is that there are no minimum requirements to join their program. It makes sense that anyone their dog can join. Their goal is to amass as many publishers (and traffic) as they can so everybody can make more money. AuctionAds will also need to build up the traffic before they start making any money as they are paying out 100% at the moment. There is no official word on when AuctionAds will begin skimming money off revenue generated but for now, publishers get to keep 100% of it. Its a win-win-loss system! Publishers Win, AuctionAds Win but eBay loses because more money is paid out in commission than before because of the higher traffic that all the publishers generate.

ShoeMoney on AuctionAds: We are focused 100% on growth and are paying out 100% for at least the first 6 months. At that time we will have a better idea of the volume and tier structure we will be in. The worse case scenario is that you will make as much if not more (because of the affiliate) as any other eBay affilaite program

Creating Your Custom AuctionAds Banner

Creating your own custom ads is extremely easy. What you do is specify some keywords of auctions that you want to appear. In the example below I wanted to pull as many different cell phone auctions as I could so I used the keyword “gsm” which seems to be in every cell phone auction on eBay.

After choosing the size of the banner you want to create, a preview of the banner is shown at the bottom of the page. At this point you can simple copy the code to the right and insert it into your ad delivery engine, or you can customize the colors of the ad so it will fit with your design. I couldn’t help but notice that the system felt very Google like while I was creating my banner.

Is AuctionAds For You?
The success of AuctionAds on your sites will depend on what your site is about. AuctionAds would not work very well here on my blog because I don’t blog too much about consumer goods. However, I have installed the AuctionAds on my car forums in a few sections. I did not deploy it site-wide for several reasons. The first reason is that the ad network is untested and unproven. I do not want to take a big hit in ad revenue to test out a new ad network so a small scale test is best. I can monitor the results and see if it is beating the Google Adsense ads that are currently running. If it does perform well, I will expand it to other sections of the forums.

Another reason I did not deploy it site wide is that I know that the auction ads will not go well in many of the sections of the forums. The auction ad code that I ultimately deployed onto the forums was for video games. On my car forums we have many off topic forums as well, and thats where I wanted to increase my ad revenue. I’ll make an update post to see how things are going after a month or two as CPA based networks usually take some time to show results. Because the test is limited, I am not risking much so I can afford to test for a bit longer.

Suggestions for Improvement
While setting up my ads, I wish I had a bit more control over what auctions show up. The keywords section should allow for negative keywords as well to help refine the featured auctions. For example, if I wanted only to display motorola cellphone auctions I would setup “motorola” and “cellphone” but many of the auctions on ebay are for cell phone cases or holders. It would be nice to be able to specify “-cases” as a keyword so I would only have auctions for motorola hardware.

Another nice to have feature would be for all the ads I create to be saved so I can quickly retrieve my ad code. I currently store it in a database so it is quite easy to retrieve but this would be a handy feature to have.

If you run a website that deals with many consumer goods, or anything that is for sale on eBay you should consider signing up for AuctionAds. You also get to make more money because under each AuctionAds banner is a built in referral link. For any publisher that you refer, you get to keep 2% of their earnings.

Other posts you may be interested in:

AuctionAds Announces Two New Bonuses!

Got My First AuctionAds Payment

Couple Technical Glitches for AuctionAds

Making Money With AuctionAds

AuctionAds eBay URL Converter